Choosing the right kind of streetlighting for your town has always been a tricky business. Which manufacturer do you get contracts with, and which is the most efficient lantern in wattage terms etc. – all considerations to add.

WRTL has long been a favourite of British (and Irish) city councils. Based in Dudley, near Birmingham, their products are pretty much a common sight everywhere now.

Lancashire have recently started using them, mainly across Blackpool and West Lancashire, where they’re either retrofitted to concrete lanterns that had either Thorn Beta 79, WRTL SRL8, Urbis ZX1/ZX12 or WRTL 2600s on! (yes, a variety of lanterns on some linked country lanes!) or as new post-top installs (mainly around Blackpool).

Wigan MBC also uses them, but less frequently, and they’re also being used in the West Midlands too.

The design is boxy, and has a “slate”-like appearance; that is, a roof tile/slate fitted onto a post.

However, this is an LED, rather than the traditional streetlight, and from WRTL’s site:

Using Indal’s REVOLED technology, which consists of the very effective DIRECTA lens equipment and the highly efficient COO-LED cooling principle, STELA achieves energy savings of up to 65% in comparison to traditional solutions.

In these days of the “credit crunch”, it may well be, in my opinion, a pretty good solution to use these. Eco-friendly and looks good [my opinion, not paid to endorse this!]

I wouldn’t be surprised if my local council started using these; but then again, another WRTL product is their favourite -the Delta, which is a grey 2600 lookalike.